Past Draws Fans For Future

HAMPTON — Graduates of Hampton's school for the disabled say their successes can be repeated for others if the school stays open.

When Ralph Shelman entered public school in Richmond more than 50 years ago, he got an education that didn't come from reading primers or a blackboard.

Nearly blind by age 10, Shelman learned he had to run. "Kids would be waiting for me to beat me up after school because my eyes looked different," he said.

Teachers didn't know how to help the disabled youngster participate in lessons, and the best materials available were strips of Braille pasted into his textbooks.

Bored with school, he became the class clown, unable to deal with a congenital disorder that destroyed his optic nerves, keeping images from being sent to his brain.

Shelman, now 60, learned a much different lesson when his family enrolled him at the Virginia School for the Deaf, Blind and Multi-Disabled in Hampton in 1952: He could accomplish much if people expected much from him.

"You learn that you're not so different after all," he said.

Today, alumni and parents of current students want the beleaguered Hampton school to stay open. Alumni attribute their success to the teachers' specialized training, attention and high expectations.

Parents whose children attend the school believe the kids are making excellent progress and don't want to send them far away for a comparable education.

The Hampton school opened in 1909 for black students who were primarily blind or deaf and wasn't integrated until 1964, Shelman remembers. It now includes students with multiple disabilities. One other state school for the disabled is in Staunton, about 100 miles west of Richmond. The Hampton school has 60 students; Staunton's has 160, including 19 from Hampton Roads. Most of the students at both schools live on campus five days a week.

A state task force recommended that the schools be consolidated and that the students move to a new building or to one of the two existing locations after renovations.

Last week, the state Board of Education chose a developer for a new school, but no one yet knows where or when.

Shelman and other alumni believe it would be a disservice to the Hampton school's legacy to close it down and move the students.

Shelman graduated in 1968. He played trumpet in the school band and for the Hampton University orchestra. He earned a bachelor's degree from HU and a master's in rehab counseling from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.

In 1982, he founded Insight Enterprises, a company that helps disabled people develop skills to live independently and assists parents of disabled children attending mainstream public schools.

In his office in Hampton, Shelman reminisced with two alumnae, Catherine Tyler-Northan and Frances Durham. They rattled off names of alumni who became professors, entrepreneurs, ministers and teachers. They talked proudly about their choir and their basketball and wrestling teams, which competed against public schools.

Northan, who is also visually impaired, started at the school in 1960 when she was 8 years old. Before that, she struggled in a mainstream school in Accomack County because she needed large-print books and did not read Braille. Those books were hard to come by.

All of that changed, she said, at the Hampton school. "You have an opportunity to gain a healthy sense of self," she said about the school. "It gave you confidence. The teachers there had high expectations of you."

Northan was co-captain of the cheerleading squad. In 1971, she graduated fifth in a class of 300 students at a public high school in Accomack. Northan and Durham worked for Shelman's company, though Durham now lives and works in Norfolk. They all agreed when they spoke about the fate of the school. It must stay open. "I think it's unfair that the state feels it needs to consolidate," Northan said. "If they must consolidate, fine, but keep the two campuses. There isn't one college. There isn't one public school. Why should there be just one state school for the disabled?"

Parents whose children attend the school now want the same thing.

Patty and John Adams have 7-year-old quintuplet sons. One, Tommy, is blind. The family moved to Virginia Beach from King William County because of the school and its relative proximity to the Navy base where John works.

Patty Adams and Tommy have been learning Braille since he started at the school two years ago. He can identify his favorite toys -- walkie-talkies, one blue and one green -- by color, though he can't see them. His speech has improved. "The teachers and therapists there are wonderful," she said. "But part of a kid's learning is at home as well. I don't want to send him away from that or his brothers."

Carmen Smith is adamant about her 15-year-old daughter, Dana, staying close to home. "There is absolutely no chance in hell that I would send her to Staunton," she said. "She needs to be home with her family."